Executive Coaching is a billion dollar industry today, and the reasons why people choose to have an Executive Coach can be as individual as the person themselves. While every relationship between a coach and client is different and every client’s specific need and situation will differ, the following list represents some of the more generic decision making factors for choosing an Executive Coach.

1. Executive Coaching is for individuals with an overreaching need and willingness to grow. Executives seeking the services of an executive coach have a need and willingness to change and grow on a professional as well as personal level. Executive coaching (with a competent executive coach) speeds up the process and helps the executive achieve results in a shorter span of time.

2. Executive Coaching helps executives become more attuned to their behaviors and skills. Self-awareness is not about ‘what should be’ -it’s about ‘what is.’ Smart executives place a high priority on becoming self-aware and realize that executive coaches can help them master this skill. Moreover, executive coaching uses experiential and reflective processes to increase the awareness of the executive, so that experience is useful.

3. Executive coaching helps executives achieve personal mastery: This also has to do with becoming more self-aware as discussed above. The fact that today’s leaders and executives have to juggle through a myriad of issues, including finances, technology, management, team and leadership, human resources, etc… when it is not humanly possible for one single person to be adept at each of these issues, brings about a need for achieving personal mastery. Executive coaching makes it easy for executives to gain personal mastery. Through personal mastery, an executive coach is able to help these executives recognize what they excel at and what can be passed onto the team –leading to better results.

4. Executive coaching helps executives use their mistakes to learn. Leaders and peak performing executives view mistakes in a positive light and learn from them. It is these executives that welcome feedback from their executive coaches in order to grow. Executive coaching helps the executive recognize this to further their learning and performance.

5. Executive coaching helps executives review and learn from personal experiences. Through self-reflection, great leaders and peak performing executives are able to learn and grow. In order to be successful, executives need to look back at personal experiences and learn from them. Executive coaching plays a vital role here as executive coaches know how to spark the process of self-reflection so the executives can use the valuable learning, which accrues from this process and apply it to their lives.

6. Executive coaching helps executives recognize and overcome internal hindrances to achieving goals. Many executives are not aware of or may simply choose to ignore their blind spots. This can be rather dangerous, especially for executives who are on the top. This is where executive coaching plays a vital role. An executive coach is gifted with the unique ability to shine the mirror on these areas so the executives are not only able to recognize and gain an awareness of the problem, but also take the necessary steps to eliminate the same.

7. Executive coaching helps executives balance the demands of task orientation with people orientation. High performing executives need to maintain focus on tasks, while keeping up a people focus to balance the two. Executive coaches play a critical role in this area.

8. Executive coaching helps executives identify pertinent learning goals. It is critical that in order to be successful in today’s competitive business environment, leaders constantly sharpen the saw. Executive coaching helps an executive effectively recognize and select key learning goals and objectives, which are beneficial to executives as well as their organizations. As soon as these goals and objectives are set by their executive coaches, these executives can begin enjoying the journey, which is leveraged and exciting.

10. Executive coaching helps executives maintain a healthy work-life balance. In today’s highly competitive and stressful environment, it can be a real challenge to maintain a healthy life-work balance. Executive coaching keeps the various facets of an executive in mind to help them maintain proper balance in all areas of their lives.

11. Executive coaches encourage sharing coaching tools with colleagues and others within the organization.The executive coaching process expands a person’s horizons by opening him up to new perspectives, ideas and ways of thinking. Executive coaching also brings in new tools, etc., which can be shared with colleagues throughout the organization.

12. Executive coaching helps executives develop a career and life game plan. Executive coaching positions executives for success as their executive coaches help them devise a strategic game plan for their careers.

Executive coaching is a process –one that evolves over time. The benefits of executive coaching are enormous if you are ready to approach it with an open mind and enjoy the process